Streaming multimedia content from various multimedia sources over various computer networks is becoming increasingly popular. Streaming has become an important element of the “Internet” experience through the significant availability of content from sites like YouTube™, Netflix® and many others. Due to growing demands for streaming multimedia content, modern cellular networks service an increasingly large amount of bandwidth enabled by multi-media smartphones and tablets.
However, since multimedia services geared towards real-time entertainment contribute significantly to the amount of traffic on these networks, they impose significant load for the organizations that provide and distribute them. Network operators and multimedia content providers and distributors are limited in their ability to control access of multimedia streams by subscribers or users. This may result in bandwidth shortages and degraded user experiences.